To Canadians and left-handers, the 2003 Masters may always be remembered as the week Weir became the first portsider in 40 years — and the only Canadian male — to win a major golf championship.

Alas, the rest of the world is apt to recall what happened here 10 years ago in the cloistered environment of the Augusta National Golf Club for other reasons.

Weir’s playoff victory over journeyman Len Mattiace, to many outside of his home country, will be filed alongside green jackets awarded in subsequent years to other unlikely champions, like Trevor Immelman and Zach Johnson and Charl Schwartzel.

But strangely enough, the Martha Burk fiasco — her failed protest, falling so badly short of the massive audience she hoped would show up to decry Augusta National’s all-male membership — remains fresh in the memory, a decade later.

At the time, it was all kind of pitiful: the smattering of recruits that trickled off the bus from Atlanta to form most of Burk’s audience, her protest consigned to a vacant grassy lot a half-mile from the golf club’s main gates, downhill from the International House of Pancakes. The police cars that outnumbered spectators about three-to-one. The feeble shouts of “whoo!” from a handful of protesters whenever Burk took the microphone.

The various wackos who surrounded the protest site. The passing cars honking in support of locals protesting Burk’s unpopular grandstand play.

Then there was the tall fellow who stood at the back of the small throng, holding up a sign that read “Make Me Dinner!” on one side, and “Iron My Shirts!” on the other, while Burk was speaking. As reporters, who also outnumbered the protesters, flocked to the man to get his name, he spelled it out: “H-a-y-w-o-o-d J-a-b-l-o-m-e” — and only after several seconds did we figure it out. At least one national publication missed the joke, and ran with it.

Like the four days of unrelenting rain that had closed the course on Monday and washed out Thursday’s opening round for the first time since 1939, like the straw and drying agent the golf course’s workers had spread in an unsuccessful bid to keep the spectators’ walking areas from becoming a mud-bog, like the barnyard stench of the resulting quagmire, Burk’s poorly-attended Saturday rally was the stage furniture that threatened to overshadow the play — and nearly did.

But on its 10th anniversary, it is no longer so easily mocked.

Burk’s threats to shame the tournament’s corporate partners may have failed to move the then-Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson “at the point of a bayonet” to alter the club’s invitation-only membership policy, but the facts are the facts.

Three years later, Johnson stepped down as chairman, to be replaced by the younger, more progressive Billy Payne, the former head of the Atlanta Olympics organizing committee.

And a decade after Burk began poking the bear, aided and abetted by the persistent badgering of the New York Times and Washington Post and USA Today and other publications, Payne announced that the club had admitted its first two female members: former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and business executive Darla Moore.

They’ll be here this week, in their green blazers, like trophies on display for both sides in the debate to make of what they will: symbols of triumph, or of tokenism. Neither, I’m guessing, will rock the boat pushing for further inroads.

Weir’s victory, the day after Burk’s demonstration, really ought to have fared better as a milestone in Masters history, and maybe one day it will be recognized for what it was: a startling, galvanizing event in Canada, the first major win by a lefty since Bob Charles of New Zealand won the 1963 Open Championship at Royal Lytham and St. Annes.

No one saw it coming, despite the fact that Weir had already won the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic and Nissan Open earlier in the year.

“I did feel under the radar, even though I felt like I was one of the favourites in my own mind,” Weir said on a recent conference call with reporters. “I think maybe because of the rain and how long the course was playing and obviously given the history of the tournament after they made the changes that a lot of the longer players were guys that were in contention.”

In the interview room, prior to the tournament, a writer noted Charles’s victory 40 years earlier and asked perennial Masters contender Phil Mickelson who he thought would be the next lefty to win a major.

"I can't tell if you're being facetious or if you really want me to answer that," Mickelson said.

"Very serious. Very serious," said his questioner.

"Well, I'm going to leave that one unanswered," Mickelson said. "I think we all know the answer to that."

Only Weir’s true believers would have bristled at the remark. After all, it was soggy, a short hitter shouldn’t have been able to cope with the demands of long irons or even fairway woods into some of the par-fours, necessitating a raft of longish, par-saving putts.

But Weir kept drilling them right into the centre of the cup, shooting a bogey-free 68 in the final round to get into the playoff with Mattiace, who had shot 65 but bogeyed the 18th to leave the door ajar.

In the playoff, at Augusta’s 10th, all Weir needed was a three-putt bogey from 45 feet away to snatch the green jacket from Mattiace, who had made a hash of it. Suddenly, the little bantamweight from Bright’s Grove, Ont., was hugging his wife Bricia and his father Rich, his brother Jimmy, his caddy Brennan Little — and then he was in the Butler Cabin, where 2002 champion Tiger Woods was holding up a green jacket in Weir’s size, saying: “Way to go, Weirsy.”

And a star was born. Within a few months, after a third place finish at the U.S. Open, Weir would be ranked No. 3 in the world. He would win the Lou Marsh Award as Canada’s outstanding athlete.

And the victory came with the all-time perk: a lifetime invite to the most prestigious tournament on Earth, admission to the exclusive club of Masters winners and the annual Tuesday night Champions Dinner.

But none of it, or his $26 million-plus in career earnings, either, can replace the feeling he had that Sunday, 10 years ago, or give him back his foundering golf game.

A month shy of his 43rd birthday, Weir comes into this week injured (rib cartilage, this time) as he has been so often the past few years, not sure if it’s wise to try to play, or smarter to save his health for the rest of his season, when he needs to make a lot of money to try to preserve his playing privileges on the PGA Tour.

Ten years later, Martha Burk’s vision has come true. Phil Mickelson’s, too. He broke through for his first major the very next year, and though he missed being its first lefty champ, he now has won three Masters.

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